SMARTDRAW IN LAW:

Winning Personal Injury Lawsuits with SmartDraw Calendars & Timelines

In Brief
Debra Haarsager works as a paralegal for Lee Hagen Law Office LTD, a leading personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents and equipment injuries. She helps the attorneys prepare cases for settlement, mediation, arbitration, and trial.

"I was asked to prepare a trial exhibit visually depicting a client's extensive medical care needs, including therapy, surgeries, hospitalizations, and doctors visits," said Haarsager.

Rather than making a list of treatments by date, Haarsager decided to make her presentation more visually compelling by representing each treatment as a symbol on a calendar.

"I hadn't really used any diagramming software before," she said. "A while ago we tried to create a similar chart using stickers and markers-but that was a lot of work. And it didn't look very professional."

Haarsager decided to look for calendar templates on the Internet, and found SmartDraw.com.

A Winning Argument
Haarsager glanced briefly at the SmartDraw tutorials, but she found the software so intuitive that she was quickly on her way.

"I just dove in, and found the software very easy to work with," she said. "And I'm not a computer genius."

Haarsager was happy to discover that SmartDraw offered thousands of ready-made symbols and images, along with dozens of templates for calendars, timelines, and Gantt charts. The SmartDraw.com website even featured Learning Centers, packed with tips, tutorials, and resources for creating professional looking calendars and timelines.

"I worked a lot with the Gantt symbols, which I liked," she said. "The 'bar graph' symbols were also very helpful."

Haarsager found SmartDraw to be friendly and flexible, allowing her to complete her work quickly and easily.

"I love the fact that SmartDraw allows you to have layered calendars," she said. "I could start with a blank calendar, and then layer each different treatment on top of it, or show various treatments together."

Case Closed
Haarsager says SmartDraw brings clarity and credibility to her firm's exhibits.

"A picture paints a thousand WORD^®s," she said. "SmartDraw helps me simplify things for a jury and create exhibits that are professional-looking, clear, concise, and persuasive."

"The last exhibit we prepared was very impressive," she said. "A juror even commented on how useful the drawings were."

SmartDraw is also saving her firm time and money. According to Haarsager, it would have cost them much more to have their exhibits professionally prepared.

Haarsager plans to use SmartDraw whenever a personal injury case requires visual aids. And she recently discovered a new treasure trove in SmartDraw's accident-diagramming templates.

"I can't wait to try them out," she said. "I saw the examples posted by law enforcement officers on SmartDraw.com, and I can see a real value in using them during a trial."

The closing argument?

"The visuals we create in SmartDraw could very well result in higher settlements and jury verdicts in our favor."